This is a wonderful account of how modern missions is working and should work. Turning the work of reaching a people group over to the people themselves and facilitating it until strong, sustainable local leadership emerges is usually a winning formula. It means accepting the fact that local leadership brings with it loads of advantages, including being more cost effective, as well as not having to learn the language nor the culture, both of which can take many long years for foreigners to get right. It also calls for a thick slice of humility, something from which all God's people can only benefit. Love the article CT. Thanks!

M Adisu

February 22, 20139:19pm

I thought the post below might interest one of you. http://ethiopianchurchdotorg.blogspot.com/2010/12/steadfast-translator-part -2.html

Michael Constantine

February 22, 20137:05pm

Ed, they stay because God did not tell them to go. When he does, most of them will. Some try to hold on too long, yes, but most of the international servants we know will leave when it is time. When they do there will be tears as well as joy; fears as well as faith. We live in that tension all the time. When God puts a people in your heart, it is never easy to leave, and you never, ever lose the love God gave you for them, even when you are away.

Ed Lauber

February 22, 20135:16pm

The tendency to celebrate long missionary service can work against the kind of missionary service this article portrays and which is so necessary today. We really ought to be asking hard questions when a missionary spends 20-30 years in one place.